2012 Auto Bild 42 Winter Tyre Braking Test

By their very nature, cold weather, or winter tyres have more of a compromise built in than another other type of tyre on the market, due to the wide range of conditions they need to perform in.

Developing a tyre to perform well in snow conditions is actually relative easy for the tyre manufacturers. Lots of edges, a nice wide tread pattern and you have a reasonable snow performance. It's the balance between snow and wet performance which is extremely important to a lot of European countries, where the cold wet conditions far out weigh the snowy or icy driving conditions, and where a lot of cheaper winter tyres fail.

The Big Test

The average budget winter tyres sacrifices too much wet performance to be considered a sensible option for the UK climate.

To highlight this, Auto Bild have taken 42 sets of winter tyres, from premium to budget, and put them through a wet and snow braking "shoot out", to see which 15 tyres go through to their group tests.

Also included in the test is a summer and all season tyre to give a balance to the market overview.

As you'd expect the summer tyre stops the shortest in the wet from 80kph, taking just 39.2 meters to stop. The best winter tyre, the Semperit, is less than a meter behind in 40.1. While the gap between braking in the wet is extremely close, the results are somewhat different on snow. Where the Semperit takes 34 meters to stop from 50kph on snow, the summer tyre which enjoyed a 0.9 meters advantage in the wet, skids up in 69.5 meters - a huge 35.5 meters longer than the winter tyre!

This test also highlights the poor performance of budget winter tyres in the wet. Using the Semperit as our benchmark, the worst winter tyre took 56 meters in wet braking, stopping 15.9 meters, or 52 foot after the Semperit tyre had stopped the car.

The all season tyre, a Goodyear Vector 4Seasons kept honest to its name by winning neither test, but doing well in both disciplines, stopping the car in 46.4 meters in the wet and 38.4 meters in the snow, which would have the tyre placed around 20th in the overall results.

Auto Bild will be taking the top 15 tyres through to the shoot out due next month, conditionally recommend places 16 to 26, and do not recommend places 27 to 42, something we completely agree with.

The average budget winter tyres sacrifices too much wet performance to be considered a sensible option for the UK climate.